


No Going Back

by bakedpotatocat



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Attempted Murder, Gen, Healing, Mentions of suicidality, PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-27 04:08:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20754086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakedpotatocat/pseuds/bakedpotatocat
Summary: Vriska goes on a journey to learn how to be happy, with a little help from some friends.





	1. Old Regrets and New Beginnings

VRISKA: Look, Karkat.   
VRISKA: I appreciate the offer, I really do.  
VRISKA: 8ut I’m not cut out for this anymore.   
VRISKA: I don’t want the spotlight, or even the supporting role.  
VRISKA: I’m tired.   
VRISKA: I don’t have the fight left in me.  
VRISKA: I don’t remember the last time I did.  
KARKAT: I GET IT.  
KARKAT: NOT EVERYONE CAN BE A RESISTANCE LEADER IN THEIR EARLY TWENTIES.  
KARKAT: AND I HAVE BACKUPS.  
KARKAT: YOU WEREN’T THE FIRST ON THE LIST, BUT YOU’RE CERTAINLY NOT THE LAST.  
KARKAT: I’M GONNA LEAVE YOU AN ENCRYPTED RADIO.  
KARKAT: THERE’S ALWAYS A SPOT FOR YOU IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND.  
VRISKA: I’m sorry, Karkat.  
KARKAT: DON’T BE.  
KARKAT: WE BOTH KNOW YOU HAVE ENOUGH REGRETS ALREADY.  
KARKAT: TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF, VRISKA.  
KARKAT: HOPEFULLY WE’LL SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN.

The grizzled troll finished his glass, set it down with a firm _clink_ onto the table, and showed himself out.

The screen door caught in the wind, a lonely clatter on a desolate mountain.

There was war, here. A mix of the three she had seen. Alternian ships bombarded the planet’s surface, twinkling, deadly stingrays swimming in the stars above, while thousands of Prospitans and Dersites marched under their respective banners. A ruined city hid a resistance base in its ashes, where she saw herself huddling among refugees in a basement bunker. Gods clashed in the sky, the fabric of reality torn apart by their fighting. A purpleblood in clown makeup was laughing at her, throwing their murderous, stained clubs mockingly.

But when she looked down, it was her face paint running, and brown blood on her hands.

Vriska woke with a start, sweating, went to wash her face in front of a cracked mirror she had broken months ago.

She was dreaming in anime again.

The clock read 3 A.M.

Vriska half awoke, almost a day later, on the couch this time, in front of a nature documentary from the Old Earth.

The Earths were maybe the only good things she had ever caused, either intentionally or not.

Sure, the Condensce kinda ruined that one, and the other, of course, died to meteor hellfire, and she had originally intended to rule either of the two with an iron fist, but, well, people change.

At least she hoped they did.

Vriska had loved hearing about all the different life on Earth, and how non-deadly and soft it all was. So unlike how she grew up. What were those things that Dave had told her Jade had one of? Dogs. Bio-engineered to love you. That seemed nice. That particular dog had turned murderous, of course, but that was probably more Jack Noir than the dog. And if it wasn’t, well, it would kinda feel like Alternia, probably.

Who had given her this? She pulled out the flash drive from her laptop and looked at it.

D.S., in orange.

The other Strider.

Dirk.

Met the dude a few times, borrowed a flash drive with pirated nature documentaries, and then came up here, to her shitty house in the woods, lived alone for 5-odd years, and never saw him again.

Fuck, was he even alive?

He and Jake had that TV show, she thought, but she didn’t exactly have cable, and who knew if it was still on the air.

Where had the years gone?

Everything seemed fake, on this paradise planet, with no overbearing spidermoms forcing you to murder other kids, or a clock ticking down on the time left to create a universe, or an evil from outside of time threatening to destroy everything in creation.

All she had was time to think about her mistakes, the evil she had done.

She had considered, at the beginning, using sopor slime or the human soporific Rose had been dependent on once.

Alcohol, was it?

There were a lot of substances she could have gotten hooked on, rotted her brain until the memories eventually just left.

But who would that leave her?

Too damn proud to drown her sorrows, she instead put her brain into hibernation, thinking time would dull the pain, watching endless hours of meaningless documentaries from a dead world.

They had it so much simpler, those lucky bastards.

No idea the end was coming, and nothing more important than whether they were going to eat.

Vriska sighed, and plugged the documentary back in.

Some time later - whether it was days or weeks or months Vriska had no idea, although it was still fairly warm outside, so she was pretty convinced it was the same year – she noticed the radio Karkat had left sitting on her counter.

How long ago had that been?

How long had she been wasting away by herself in this cabin in the woods?

Memories, thoughts she had worked so hard to suppress, slowly fought their way to the front of her brain.

There was about to be a war on, Karkat had said.

Xenophobic elements of the human government.

Had it started? If you crossed a couple mountain ranges, would you hear shelling in the distance? Or was it still the preliminary stages, coups discussed, rebellions planned and put down horrifically by the authorities, a pot of bubbling, building social tension not yet boiled over?

Vriska went to the bathroom, dug around in the drawers until she could find an unbroken hand mirror, and forced herself to stare into her tired eyes.

She barely recognized who she saw.

It wasn’t the matted hair, or the bags under her eyes.

Vriska looked at herself, and whatever fire used to shine through her gaze, what drive she had to live and fight and roll the dice, it was gone.

When was the last time it was there?

She couldn’t stay here anymore. The last time anyone had visited was Karkat, and that was because he was desperate. He needed help, and she said no. That was why no one came by anymore.

They had lives, and she had regrets.

She had pushed away Terezi and Dave and Karkat, and they had stopped trying to save her.

Once upon a time, Vriska might have blamed them.

She couldn’t bring herself to.

Her bag was packed. Camping gear from the one time they had tried, soon after coming to Earth C. As much food as she could carry. A small plush spider Terezi had made her, the radio Karkat had left, a Nic Cage poster from John, and the hard drive of nature documentaries. Vriska sat on the stoop, cut her hair back to her ears with a knife, and stood up. With a flourish she hadn’t felt in years, she struck a match, tossed it behind her into a waiting pile of gasoline, and set off into the wilderness with the house blazing behind her.

No going back.

If she couldn’t feel the fire in her belly, she would feel the one at her back.

A lot of stories end with the narrator resolving to be a better or happier person than they were.

It had always seemed a bit of a cop-out, and an irritating failure to a teenage girl looking for answers.

None ever followed the hard work of actually changing to be the better. 

Maybe novels weren't cut out for that kind of character development.

That kind of boring, repetitive hard work doesn't lend itself well to an interesting story.

Maybe it's worth a try anyway.


	2. What A Wonderful World

She had been walking a couple days, now.

It was quiet out here, so much like the documentaries, only with so much more… emptiness.

That wasn’t quite right. Life permeated every corner of this world, hiding beneath branches and teeming in the trunks of fallen trees and beneath rubble and rocks. This world was so unlike Alternia, and yet so much like it.

There was death, obviously, but it didn’t haunt _her_ in the way it did in the wilds of Alternia. Back home, if you could even call it that, there was always danger lurking. There was nowhere to relax. Out here, in the people-less wilds of the mountains, all you had to keep an eye out for were animals that were more scared of you than you of them. Life had evolved strangely over the thousands of years that Earth C had, compared to the millions of the old planet or the aeons of sweeps of Alternia.

A paradise planet.

Somewhere she could eventually settle down, and comfortably call home.

What was home, anyway? Certainly not with Spidermom. Her cabin was comfortable. but it was more akin to the hibernation cave of a cholerbear than anything else. Maybe the meteor was home. Cold, and dark, and boring at times, but filled with the warmth of friends, maybe even people she could call family. Vriska instinctually chased that thought out of her head. A person like her didn’t deserve family that she would just hurt.

That was the bad thing about the quiet out here (not silence, thank god, not like that of the Furthest Ring, of empty, meaningless, disconnected space.) Plenty of room to think about your mistakes, regrets, the person you knew you were and wished you weren’t.

Vriska wondered idly if she was lost. Or if she would end up doomed to wander these lands endlessly, a fitting punishment for her sins.

Then she remembered she was still technically a god; she could just fly up until she found a landmark she recognized.

She didn’t even really _need_ food and water, if she was being honest.

Still, seemed a fate worse than death, to be doomed to irrelevance forever.

But that is what she had done, didn’t she?

Moved away, hid in the wilderness because she couldn’t reconcile who she was without the pressure of a life- or world- or universe- or all of known reality-ending threat.

Her life was kinda hilarious, if looked at objectively, in how slovenly it followed the power escalation of any of the dumbass shonens she had read on the meteor.

Horrible things. Murder, mutilation, manipulation, you name it, the sins would crawl down her back. And sure, maybe it was towards a good cause, or it was the influence of Doc Scratch. It all ended up okay, didn’t it? Most of her friends (she shuddered at the thought that maybe it was everyone _important_ that had survived) had lived into this happily ever after. That was life. Not everyone made it.

For a long time, she was convinced that she wasn’t meant to make it. Or that she didn’t deserve it. Maybe she had walked into more danger than she deserved, even back then, as a way of punishing herself.

Vriska looked at her hands, and she could feel the blood on them, even if she had long ago washed her hands of it.

And yet she had survived. For what, she couldn’t tell you, although she knew why.

Terezi had brought her back, twice. Once on the meteor, and then the second when she was ready to go sacrifice herself in the dreambubbles to defeat Lord English.

Despite how blurry the events of all those years ago felt, she remembered it clear as day.

VRISKA: I have to go. They need me out there way more than you guys do.   
TEREZI: WH4T DO TH3Y N33D OUT TH3R3, VR1SK4?  
TEREZI: YOUR T4CT1C4L 3XP3RT1S3?   
TEREZI: YOUR W1LL1NGN3SS TO PULL TH3 TR1GG3R ON TH3 ULT1M4T3 W34PON?   
TEREZI: M33N4H C4N DO 4LL OF TH4T, 4ND YOU KNOW 1T.   
TEREZI: 4ND SH3’S 4LR34DY D34D.  
TEREZI: H3LL. 4R4N34 COULD DO 4NY OF TH4T, OR 3V3N 4R4D14.   
TEREZI: S1GH  
TEREZI: 1’V3 LOOK3D 1NTO TH3 FUTUR3, VR1SK4.  
TEREZI: 1 KNOW 1F YOU GO OUT TH3R3, YOU 4R3N’T COM1NG B4CK.   
TEREZI: 4ND 1 DON’T KNOW WHY.  
TEREZI: 1 DON’T KNOW WHY YOU’R3 SO S3T ON GO1NG WH4T 1S OBV1OUSLY 4 SU1C1D3 M1SS1ON.   
TEREZI: BUT 1 N33D YOU H3R3, VR1SK4.   
TEREZI: 4ND W3 4LL W4NT YOU TO JO1N US 1N TH3 WORLD W3’R3 GO1NG TO BU1LD.  
TEREZI: 3V3N FUCK1NG K4RK4T, 4LTHOUGH H3 WON’T 4DM1T 1T.   
TEREZI: NOW 1 C4N’T S33 WH4T H4PP3NS 4FT3R W3 W4LK THROUGH TH4T DOOR  
TEREZI: BUT 1 KNOW YOU DON’T W4LK THROUGH 1T W1TH US.  
TEREZI: ST4Y W1TH US, VR1SK4.  
TEREZI: ST4Y W1TH M3.  
TEREZI: SCOURG3 S1ST3RS V3RSUS TH3 WORLD.  
TEREZI: ON3 L4ST ROUND.  
VRISKA: Okay.  
VRISKA: I will.

What had happened?  
How had she managed to push Terezi away?  
They used to be inseparable.  
Maybe Terezi grew out of whatever she had liked about her.  
Not that there was much to like.

Well, that was the old Vriska, wasn’t it.  
If this planet could be beautiful and full of life, maybe she could too.  
The old Vriska was from a world of war and murder and trauma.  
Maybe there could be a new one, grown newly reborn from this garden.

  
A fresh start.

Something out of the corner of her eye pulled Vriska out of her melancholy monologue.  
A flash of burgundy red, draped in a crimson clockwork halo, in a clearing nearby.  
Vriska pushed her way through the trees and saw an old friend that had been missing for years.

ARADIA: sup   
ARADIA: 0u0


	3. A Fairy Goddess Arrives

The shimmering crimson fairy waved hello, and beckoned Vriska over.

VRISKA: Aradia? What the fuck are you doing here?  
VRISKA: *How* in the fuck are you here?  
ARADIA: good to see you too!  
ARADIA: don’t worry i expected this  
ARADIA: its a long story thats decidedly not important  
ARADIA: what is much more important is how *you* are here!   
ARADIA: that being the watershed event for this split in reality  
VRISKA: Uh… okay.  
VRISKA: How long you… 8een 8ack in town?  
ARADIA: a while!  
VRISKA: Oh.  
VRISKA: That tracks.  
ARADIA: no no  
ARADIA: from your perspective, not very long at all!  
ARADIA: or maybe not even quite yet  
ARADIA: time travel’s a lot blurrier than it used to be  
ARADIA: given that the big reference point and determiner of the alpha timeline is dead!  
ARADIA: sollux is a pretty good waypoint though  
VRISKA: Anyway.  
VRISKA: Look, since I was a dum8ass 8ack then and never otherwise had the chance –   
VRISKA: I’m sorry, Aradia.  
VRISKA: For killing you, and using Sollux to do it, and for murdering your FLARP partner.  
ARADIA: well   
ARADIA: its not like you really had a choice  
ARADIA: up until the point the lord was very unceremoniously murdered  
ARADIA: any version of you that didn’t make those choices would have slowly faded from existence in a doomed timeline!  
ARADIA: and besides, i had already forgiven you  
ARADIA: death, undeath, rebirth, being a ghostly spirit guide…  
ARADIA: theyre less different than you think!  
ARADIA: i did hate you for a while  
ARADIA: in another life i could see that being a pretty fun kismessitude  
ARADIA: but if things didnt happen the way they did  
ARADIA: i wouldnt have gotten to see the end of all things!  
ARADIA: and that was really cool  
ARADIA: so all in all, i would say  
ARADIA: i appreciate your apology but consider us chill!  
VRISKA: Sorry, this is a lot to process.  
VRISKA: We’re cool? Just like that?  
VRISKA: I haven’t seen anyone in lord knows how long and the first to return is a long-thought dead friend that i had *murdered* and left 8ehind for what i thought was forever!  
VRISKA: AND SHE’S NOT EVEN MAD AT ME!?!?!?!?

Aradia, with a motion, invites Vriska to sit down on a picnic blanket that seemingly materializes in front of them. She reluctantly sits down and puts her head in her hands.

VRISKA: I don’t deserve this.  
VRISKA: You’re 8eing too nice.  
VRISKA: Is this some kind of sick revenge scheme?  
VRISKA: Or just yet another person getting inside my head for their own gain?  
VRISKA: I don’t get it.  
ARADIA: well  
ARADIA: i sort of do!  
ARADIA: i wasn’t sure why i would go back in time to help you  
ARADIA: when i got here that time loop was already in place  
ARADIA: but obviously you need it!  
ARADIA: and that’s ok  
ARADIA: i may be a magic fairy goddess  
ARADIA: but i cant and wont be your magic fairy godmother  
ARADIA: that fixes everything for you  
ARADIA: you have to do that  
ARADIA: but i might be able to expedite the process!  
VRISKA: I’m listening.  
ARADIA: nothing you did back on alternia or the meteor is exactly your fault  
ARADIA: not in my book, anyway  
ARADIA: other people  
ARADIA: including you  
ARADIA: might see that differently, which i understand  
ARADIA: let me start from the beginning  
ARADIA: at the start of all of this  
ARADIA: lord english had bound all of our fates into his ultimate predestination  
ARADIA: both via his control over the destiny of the alpha timeline  
ARADIA: and via his surrogates, like doc scratch  
ARADIA: in that scenario we essentially both did and did not have free will  
ARADIA: seeing as that any action that deviated from the alpha timeline  
ARADIA: the intersection of both the implementation of our own will and the somewhat overriding reality of lord englishs inevitability   
ARADIA: (whether that personal will was manipulated into reality or not being a separate question from its influence)  
ARADIA: we were trapped within that story for a long time  
ARADIA: me especially because as his maid i was much more tightly bound to the implementation of the lords machinations  
ARADIA: but i was able to choose a third option  
ARADIA: between the false binary of live in his shadow or die in vain  
ARADIA: partly because sollux showed me how  
ARADIA: and partly because i found a new benefactor  
ARADIA: who called to me from the shadows of the furthest reaches of the void  
ARADIA: and who put me to task to guide the dreambubbles to a point where they would be prepared for her rebirth  
ARADIA: an alternate calliope that offered an alternate future  
ARADIA: i believe even now there is a version of me that follows her  
ARADIA: against whoever else seeks to seize control of our infinite fates  
ARADIA: but i am getting ahead of myself!

  
ARADIA: the instigating event  
ARADIA: that allowed all of this  
ARADIA: was john’s acquiring of the juju!  
ARADIA: a loophole paradox space had left itself  
ARADIA: so that it could eventually be freed from lord englishs grasp  
ARADIA: with the juju in johns hands  
ARADIA: a bubble of uncertainty in spacetime had opened up around us  
ARADIA: freeing us partially from the oppressive yoke of the lords canon  
ARADIA: and though the heir held the controls to manipulating this bubble  
ARADIA: it was through the seers commands it would be used!  
ARADIA: terezi had lost everything and was running out of time  
ARADIA: so she used the most powerful emotion she could muster to rewrite history itself  
ARADIA: the regrets of her youth  
ARADIA: culminating in its ultimate expression of the prevention of your otherwise timely death!  
ARADIA: and while the repercussions of this Choice would normally find itself in you being there at the end  
ARADIA: to stare the destruction of reality in the face and laugh  
ARADIA: the thread of prophecy, of canon, had already been loosened  
ARADIA: and that wiggle room would allow the seer to save you again   
ARADIA: resulting in the timeline in which we now inhabit  
ARADIA: unbound from traditional canon we exist as radically free versions of ourselves  
ARADIA: and while we may have some mysterious benefactor setting the currents

Stop peeking behind the curtain, Aradia.

I’m using limited narration here for a reason.

ARADIA: sorry!  
VRISKA: what  
ARADIA: nothing important  
ARADIA: while we may not be in control of the currents of events  
ARADIA: we newly have the rudder  
ARADIA: steering our ships in whatever way we can!  
ARADIA: our fates are our own  
ARADIA: i am merely here now  
ARADIA: as an emissary to help you along the path you wish! 

VRISKA: Yeah. I think I want to 8e… 8etter.

VRISKA: Than I was. Than I am.  
VRISKA: You know, you said all that junk a8out f8 and canon and choice and yet  
VRISKA: I don’t really feel all that much 8etter.  
VRISKA: A8out the things I did.  
VRISKA: Or a8out what I’ve seen.  
VRISKA: Turns out “it had to happen” isn’t a very satisfying answer.  
ARADIA: that makes sense!  
ARADIA: 8ut i think I’ve got something that will help  
ARADIA: we’re gonna have you talk to the other vriskas!  
VRISKA: God, there are still other versions of me?  
ARADIA: sort of!  
ARADIA: more or less  
ARADIA: perhaps you can glean something about who you are and how to be a different version of yourself!  
ARADIA: here, i drew up a chart!  
VRISKA: Who the fuck are these other guys?  
ARADIA: you! sort of  
VRISKA: what the fuck does “auth left” and “lib left” and “lib right” and “auth right” mean  
VRISKA: I’m assuming I’m the “Vriska Serket” that is canon but not relevant?  
VRISKA: And “auth right”, wha8ver that means?  
ARADIA: i told sollux not to add those   
ARADIA: its not your fault the marquise’s journals were an indoctrinating account of space fascism  
VRISKA: I don’t know what a single one of those labels means.  
ARADIA: exactly!  
VRISKA: So I’m not considered relevant?  
VRISKA: That’s kinda depressing, but I suppose I kind of did that to myself.  
ARADIA: dont worry!  
ARADIA: were gonna get your swagger back  
VRISKA: how?  
ARADIA: you’ll see 0u0

END OF PART 1: SCENE SETTING <

ARADIA: youre gonna meet vriskas past, present, and future!

> BEGIN PART 2: A VRISMAS CAROL

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have noticed, or be wondering, as to what extent I manipulated the events of the first two parts of this work, given the amount of introspection detailed in the much less reliable form of direct narration as opposed to dialogue. If you choose to believe that I have manipulated Vriska into wanting to be a better person, that is very well on you. Like Serket herself my methods may be more dubious than my goals. 
> 
> Everyone needs a little push sometimes. If external circumstances cannot be contrived to generate that, then perhaps internal circumstances may have to be.


End file.
